Ten Colours, All Grey.
By Ludwig Lohmann
During my first winter in Berlin, the sun didn’t shine for 43 days straight. Not a single minute. That winter, I would take the U8 from Prenzlauer Berg to Neukölln each day. Back then I hadn’t yet discovered how much better it is to get around the city by bike, even in winter. On the train and in the streets, I watched the people around me. They seemed to have absorbed the season’s darkness into themselves — into their clothes, their posture, and their thoughts. Even the facial skin of many mirrored the grey of the sky.
I had been warned against moving to Berlin in winter. People said the city was particularly harsh and unwelcoming at that time of year. Many would flee to Southeast Asia to escape the gloom, as not to risk being swallowed by its melancholy. To me, this felt like a kind of betrayal — a shortcut. Shouldn’t one endure the chill of winter to truly earn the light and warmth of spring?
Now, ten years later, I understand what my friends meant by their warnings. Surviving a Berlin winter demands strategies - and by that I mean more than just a thick coat to shield you from the biting east wind as you wait, yet again, on the platform of a Ringbahn station. In a Berlin winter, we need sources of light.
Quite literally — at home in your own apartment; a pleasant, cozy, and invigorating light. And figuratively, through time deliberately spent with the people we love. There’s no such thing as too many Christmas dinners with friends in December, sauna visits in January, or long walks across the ‚Feld‘ in February.
Alas - Tempelhofer Feld. Even in winter, it’s often brighter there than anywhere else in the city. The sky’s ten colours, all grey, begin to shimmer, evoking the drama of wild 19th-century paintings. And sometimes even snow blankets the vast fields, the blue sky above is so breathtakingly beautiful that you can only be grateful not to be in Bali.
I didn’t know any of this during my first winter in Berlin. I didn’t yet have friends to invite to Christmas dinners or companions for a sauna trip. But even in that initial winter, I sensed the promise this city holds — its restlessness, its possibilities, its electric energy. And also the unexpected silence that lingers behind certain corners, a silence that seems to belong uniquely to winter. I read the faces on the U8 like a novel. From the very first page, I was captivated by the dark, alluring, and mysterious story of this city.
Ludwig Lohmann is a literature advocate, cyclist, and Berliner by choice. Together with Maria-Christina Piwowarski, he produces the podcast blauschwazberlin, where they talk about the stories that unite us — and those that expand our horizons. He visits Tempelhofer Feld at least once a day, simply to take in its vastness.